Untouchable – review

François Cluzet and Omar Sy as unlikely friends Philippe and Driss in French comedy drama Untouchable: 'slick as an oil spill, sugary as an éclair'.

"Based on a true story" but more than a little tweaked, this popular movie is to be France's entry for the best foreign language film Oscar. It's a polished account of the odd-couple friendship between Philippe (François Cluzet), a rich, handsome, cultivated quadriplegic, and his new carer, Driss (Omar Sy), an intelligent, charismatic, uneducated young working-class west African who has done time for robbery. What draws them together is their total honesty, sense of humour and contempt for stuffy bourgeois hypocrisy, and the general gaucheness of nearly everyone around them. It's as slick as an oil spill, as sugary as an eclair, and many moviegoers will find it irresistible.